


Going Shopping

by owlgal



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, F/M, No Angst, Shapeshifting, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 08:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17742728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlgal/pseuds/owlgal
Summary: This story from Tobias's perspective is set somewhere between book 13 and book 19 and contains spoilers for book 13. The story is set around an interaction between Rachel and Tobias, and what Tobias chooses to do with a gift she gives him. I got the idea for this story from a joke in Episode 23 in the Animorphs Anonymous podcast, so thank you Kaycie and Alex for the idea!





	Going Shopping

It was a beautiful day over the city, cloudless, with just a hint of a breeze. The wind felt almost alive as I shaped it with my wings, gliding from thermal to thermal over the buildings. I was going shopping. Now, while you might think it's a little weird for a bird, particularly an elite bird of prey such as myself, to want to collect human objects, there are birds that do it all the time. Bowerbirds use blue objects to attract mates, and crows and ravens not only collect man-made objects, but sometimes learn how to use them as tools. Now, it's true that raptors such as myself aren't generally observed collecting human artifacts, but here is where I let you in on a little secret. I wasn't always a bird.

I won't bore you with the details about the ongoing invasion of disgusting alien slugs that squeeze themselves into people's brains and take over their bodies. I won't spend too much time telling you about the night my friends and I walked into a construction site and encountered one of the bravest beings in the universe, and one of the evilest, how we were given the power to morph into any animal we could get our hands on, and how we five teenagers were charged with saving the world. But with power and purpose comes limitations. If any of us stayed in morph for too long, we would be forever trapped as that animal. And so I, who had been a normal, unassuming middle schooler with a crappy home life, now lived my life as a red-tailed hawk.

It wasn't too bad being a hawk. I had to hunt and kill my own food, sleep outside, and I couldn't see past my own beak at night. But my friends hadn't abandoned me. I could be useful to them. I could go wherever I wanted - fly wherever I wanted. And I could still help save the world. And a few months ago, a superpowered, universal being who liked to screw up people's lives had given me back the power to morph, as well as my human form.

So now back to shopping. A few days ago, my friend Rachel had given me a weatherproofed box, meant for keeping tools and stuff safe while workers toted them around. She had brought it to my meadow after school with some help from our friend Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (we call him Ax), who is an alien, but one of the good ones. After Ax had left to run for dinner, Rachel had sat underneath my favorite tree and talked to me for a while. “Mom wants to paint the living room, but she doesn't know what color she wants yet. So she dragged us all to Home Depot to look at paint colors because she ‘wanted our opinions’. I looked at paint for hours. If I ever see another one of those paint swatches again, I swear I'll set it on fire.” Rachel’s face echoed the irritation in her voice, but even irritated she was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. She was dressed as impeccably as always, and even after hiking a few miles through the forest with a giant box not even a single hair had looked out of place. “But anyway, Jordan and I started wandering around the store, and I saw these boxes. I figured since you have your human morph back now, you might want to get some stuff. Clothes or books or junk food or something.” She paused, then went on in a rush. “You don't have to, but I thought you should have the option, you know? So I made up some sob story about the clinic needing one, but Cassie's family not being able to find it and Mom said we could get it since it was cheap and we were there already.”

<Thank you, I really appreciate it,> I said. “Is there anything you want to put in it?” Rachel asked hesitantly. <Not yet, but now I know that if I do want something, I have a place to put it.> It really was a thoughtful gift. Rachel had always been the first to remember that I used to be human. The others did their best, but even they tended to treat me like a hawk-shaped person, and not someone who used to be human. Sometimes Rachel remembered even before I did. I eyed the box, which was perched precariously on top of some rocks. <Maybe we should do something to secure it better? It looks like it'll wash away next time it rains.> Rachel grinned and stood up, stretching. “I know exactly what to do. Where do you want it?” I pointed my beak at the spot. <Under that tree over there. See how it's elevated and a little flatter?>

“Got it,” Rachel said, and started her morph. It was one of the good ones, relatively speaking. There was no way of knowing what would morph when, and the sight and sound of a morph could make even a hawk feel queasy. Rachel first grew into a nine-foot tall version of herself. Her bones reshaped themselves, gaining mass and changing her shape. All of the hair on her body disappeared back into her pores, and her hands and feet changed shape, her fingers shrinking and her toes growing. Her skin expanded and hung lose, which was odd to see. With my hawk vision, I saw her pores multiplying and spreading out as her skin stretched out. Half a second later, her muscles grew to fill in the skin. For a moment, she was just a hulking, massive Rachel, ready to do some damage. She was still beautiful. How did that girl do it? Then course brown fur erupted from her skin in patches, spreading until it covered her whole body. As the final detail, her nose flattened out, turning leathery and brown. And instead of the gorgeous middle school gymnast who had been there thirty seconds ago, there was a North American grizzly bear.

Rachel lumbered a few steps over to the spot I had indicated for the box and started digging, her enormous paws moving shovelfuls of earth with each swipe. <Tell me when the hole is big enough, ok?> I watched Rachel dig for a few moments, both impressed and annoyed. On the one hand, Rachel hardly ever got to use this morph for anything outside of battle. She could rarely just have fun with it. On the other hand, even if grizzly bears weren’t native to this area, the smell of such a large predator in my meadow would keep anything larger than a mouse hidden for the next few days. But as I watched Rachel, I decided it was worth it. I could hunt a little farther afield for the next few days in exchange for friends.

Once Rachel had dug a sufficient hole we both went human and stuck the box in, half burying it and piling earth up the sides. The box had a lock near the top, the kind of tiny combination lock that I could work with my beak. I didn’t know if Rachel had gotten that on purpose or not, but it was a nice gesture - even if there was no way my hawk body would be able to lift the box’s lid. Once we had finished with the box, we sat around and talked for a few more minutes. Then Rachel had to go home, and I had to demorph and hunt for some dinner.

 

I had thought a lot about what I wanted to get to put inside the box. It wasn’t chilly enough yet for me to need a blanket, or even more clothes than my morphing outfit. Junk food had been a strong contender, but then I remembered how long it had been since I had had taste buds, and how Ax reacted when he ate food. I couldn’t shake the thought of one of my friends coming to my meadow to visit me, only to find my human morph catatonic in the carnage of Fruit-Roll-Ups and Oreos. Plus, there were other considerations. It would take way too long for me to walk back to my meadow with whatever I bought. I would have to stop and demorph along the way, then remorph into human, which would be very dangerous and take up too much time. So whatever I bought would have to be something I could carry as a hawk. Still, I did want to buy something. That was what people did.

Yesterday, I had seen this ten-dollar bill skating across the asphalt of a Wal-Mart parking lot in the wind. People lose more money than you think, and hardly ever notice. This time, I dove after the money. Once I saw it, I knew what I wanted to buy; something so quintessentially human that I would definitely have to explain it to Ax. Something that I could own just for the sake of owning something. Something that I would never in a million years tell Rachel, the queen of shopping, I wanted.

I saw the strip mall I was aiming for coming up on my left. I dove down behind the dumpsters at the back and went to my human morph. As always, it felt odd to be human. So big and clumsy. And I always missed my hawk vision. I walked around to the front of the strip mall and found the door I wanted. Walking in felt strange. The atmosphere was different. The air moved differently. It was so still and quiet, and I couldn’t hear the clerk’s heartbeat. I felt a moment of panic at not having brought any backup with me, then forced it down. I didn’t need backup. People did this all the time. I walked up to the counter and showed the clerk my ten dollars. “I’d like to buy some stamps, please.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked this story, please let me know. I might write more!


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